What began as a group of four friends plotting plans to name and shame David Cameron over ‘Brexit chaos’ has quickly transformed into a highly skilled and professional campaign group. After five years, many people are now familiar with Led By Donkeys, or at least familiar with some of their stunts or attention-grabbing and sometimes moving public displays.
Until recently, the identity of the four men who run the operation remained a secret but now they are going public and two of them live in Bristol. Ben Stewart and James Sadri have both called Bristol their home for the best part of ten years.
Last weekend the first ever Led By Donkey’s public exhibition was held on the Midland Road art space in Old Market. The place was packed and by the weekend queues of people were struggling to get through the door.
Although half of the team live in Bristol, the reason for holding the exhibition in Bristol goes beyond that.
“We probably would have held the exhibition in Bristol even if we didn’t live here,” said James. “Bristol has such a vibrant activist community. That’s part of the reason we are here – it’s an amazing city and it feels like home to me.”
While the group’s Covid-19 wall – a campaign done in collaboration with Covid-19 bereaved families for justice – remains in Westminster, they currently have a huge billboard in Clacton informing constituents that their well known MP, Nigel Farage, is the highest paid in the country. The group have also done moving video displays of migrants telling their stories and put together crazy political stunts that have taken their work as far as Spain.
Despite living in Bristol they haven’t felt the need to target the city but said they have plenty of local collaborators and volunteers from Bristol. In January the group laid out clothes in a line on Bournemouth beach to represent all the children killed so far in the Gaza war; which was 11,500 at the time.
The work, which was on display at their recent exhibition, would not have been possible without the volunteers who helped them carry out the task of putting together 11,500 children’s outfits and laying them out on the beach. Many of the volunteers came to support from Bristol.
Their often provocative public displays are designed to show the hypocrisy of political leaders or help people to view issues from a different perspective to that of the dominant political narrative. But sometimes, their work can mean something to people on a personal level.
“At the exhibition a guy came up to me and he was struggling to talk because he was choking up a bit and he said how the wall meant a lot to him and his family who had found a place to grieve. But also how angry they had been at the government for releasing Covid patients into care homes and that’s why his grandfather had died,” explained Ben.
“I think the Covid wall played a part in forcing the government to have a public enquiry, the fantastic campaign group Covid-19 bereaved families for justice made that happen but I think the wall was one part of that,” he added. The group say they often live to work with grassroots campaign groups and use their platform to amplify their message.
James said: “I think a big part of what we do is finding the right partners. People who really have the legitimacy to have the platform and really should be heard – we look to partner with them and elevate them however we can.
“Over the summer we made a really powerful film with a former RAF pilot, a guy called Sidney McFarland who was a member of the Windrush generation, that went up on the white cliffs over Dover in June.” During the pandemic the group had used Dover as the backdrop for another short film of a man who had risked his life crossing the sea on a small but and then become a volunteer for the NHS.
“His story was a way of a way to try and puncture that kind of racist discourse that the likes of Farage are constantly pumping into our national conversation,” he added. While such films counter the anti-migrant narrative promoted by politicians like Farage, he has often been a direct target of their work and still is.
The group managed to get the domain name for Farage’s former Brexit party, days before its launch and set up a website with a picture of him in a rain storm of £50 notes. His lawyers contacted them and asked for it to be removed which they replied they would be happy to do for £1m but the money will be donated to a migrant charity and the website price will go up £50,000 a day.
“He sent us a legal letter saying, ‘I want my website back’ and he sighted European law in it 50 times. It’s up to 89 million now. We definitely enjoyed quite a lot of getting under his skin,” said Ben.
“He’s definitely donkey number one and it will take a lot to knock him off that spot,” added James. More recently the group have upset Reform party supporters with their billboard in Clacton and witnessed an irate Farage after they managed to drop a banner of Putin stating ‘I love Farage’ behind him during the election campaign in May.
But when all the fun is over, for at least half the team, Bristol is one of the cities they feel most comfortable with. Speaking of the activism in the city and the recent display of unity against the far-right in Old Market, Ben added: “It has got a bit of a scrappy can-do attitude and for half the project it feels like a great place to be. Bristol’s always had a bit of a revolutionary feel.”